Subsidy Sheet: FREEZE New York State’s corporate giveaways
Reinvent Albany is part of a growing movement urging the legislature to freeze corporate handouts and reject the billions in new and expanded subsidies proposed by the governor.
New York state and local taxpayers already provide close to $10 billion dollars a year for corporate giveaways that independent experts on the left, right, and center have shown time and time again do not work.
Reinvent Albany seeks to make government in New York transparent and accountable. We believe these huge corporate giveaways epitomize everything wrong with New York: billions of dollars of public funds are being given away because of pay-to-play and heavily-funded pressure from well-connected special interests – not evidence. Incredibly, the Democrats who run New York try to rationalize what is basically trickle-down economics with utterly discredited economic development pseudoscience that boils down to the notion that giving New York’s tax dollars to wealthy businesses and investors is somehow a sensible way to create good jobs.
It is a settled fact outside the goldfish bowl of Albany pay-to-play that corporate handouts are a waste of tax dollars. New York’s most comprehensive study of corporate handouts is the 2013 report to the Governor’s Tax Reform and Fairness Commission, which concluded:
Corporate tax breaks “…violate principles of good tax policy and tenets of good budgeting. …Research studies conducted since the mid-1950s show that [they do not impact] net economic gains.”
New York Corporate Giveaways This Week:
- NYS has spent more than $8 billion on film/TV tax credits since 2004 despite independent studies showing taxpayers are getting a bad return on their investment.
- Broadway theater owners are on the verge of getting their own $300 million in recurring state subsidies modeled on the Film/TV tax credit.
- Senator Skoufis investigates Orange County IDA after it doled out subsidies to a business who disclosed on an application it did not need them.
- The study making the case for a $455 million state loan to Belmont is so secret it cannot be shown to the public.
- Columnist Ross Barkan gives a run-down on the state’s enormous corporate giveaways, most notably the film/TV tax credit.
- There is a push in the legislature to end Madison Square Garden’s $43m/year tax break.
If you got this from a friend, sign up here. Subsidy Sheet is written by Elizabeth Marcello and edited by John Kaehny.